Without argument Mary started to remove her shorts. The second cop said kindly, "That isn't necessary lady, not the way those things are built. Just turn around slowly."

"Thank you," Mary said and complied. The policeman's point was well taken; Mary's briefies appeared to have been sprayed on, and her halter also quite evidently contained nothing but Mary.

"How about those bandages?" the first one commented. "Her clothes sure can't cover anything." I thought, brother, how wrong you are; I'll bet she's packing at least two guns this minute, besides the one in her purse-and I'll bet one of them is ready to heat up quicker than yours! But what I said was,

"She's been badly burned. Can't you see that?" He looked doubtfully at the sloppy job I had done on the dressings; I had worked on the principle that, if a little is good, more is better, and the dressing across her shoulders where she had been burned the worst undoubtedly could have concealed a slug, if that had been the purpose. "Mmmm . . ." he said, "If she was burned."

"Of course she was burned!" I felt my judgment slipping away; I was the perfect heavy husband, unreasonable where my wife was concerned. I knew it-and I liked it that way. "Damn it, look at her hair! Would she ruin a head of hair like that just to fool you?"

The first cop said darkly, "One of them would."

The more patient one said, "Carl is right. I'm sorry, lady; we'll have to disturb those bandages."

I said excitedly, "You can't do that! We're on our way to a doctor. You'll just-"

Mary said, "Help me, Sam. I can't take them off myself."

I shut up and started to peel up one corner of the big dressing, my hands trembling with rage. Presently the older, more kindly one whistled and said, "I'm satisfied. How about you, Carl?"

"Me, too. Ski. Gripes, girlie, it looks like somebody tried to barbecue you. What happened?"

"Tell them, Sam."

So I did. The older cop finally commented, "I'd say you got off easy-no offense, madam. So it's cats, now, eh? Dogs I knew about. Horses, yes. But cats-you wouldn't think the ordinary cats could carry one." His face clouded. "We got a cat and now we'll have to get rid of it. My kids won't like that."

"I'm sorry," Mary told him and sounded as if she meant it.

"It's a bad time for everybody. Okay, folks, you can go-"

"Wait a minute," the first one said. "Ski, if she goes through the streets with that thing on her back somebody is likely to burn her."

The older one scratched his chin. "That's true," he said to Mary. "I'd say you couldn't stand to have that dressing off. We'll just have to dig up a prowl car for you."

Which they did-one was just landing and they hailed it. I had to pay the charges on the rented wreck, then I went along, as far as Mary's entrance. It was in a hotel, through a private elevator; I got in with her to avoid explanations, then went back up after she had gotten out at a level lower than the obvious controls of the car provided for. I was tempted to go on in with her, but the Old Man had ordered me to come in by Kay Five, so Kay Five it was.

I was tempted, too, to put my shorts back on. In the prowl car and during a quick march through a side door of the hotel, with police around us to keep Mary from being shot, I had not minded so much-but it took nerve to step out of the elevator and face the world without pants.

I need not have worried. The short distance I had to go was enough to show me that a fundamental custom had gone with last year's frost. Most men were wearing straps-codpieces, really-as the cops had been, but I was not the only man in New Brooklyn stark naked to his shoes. One in particular I remember; he was leaning against a street roof stanchion and searching with cold eyes every passer-by. He was wearing nothing but slippers and a brassard lettered with "VIG"-and he was carrying an Owens mob gun under his arm.

I saw three more like him before I reached Kay Five; I was glad that I was carrying my shorts.

Some women were naked, some were not-but those who were not might as well have been-string brassieres, translucent plastic trunks, nothing that could possibly hide a slug.

Most of the women, I decided, would have looked better in clothes, preferably togas. If this was what the preachers had been worrying about all these years, then they had been barking up the wrong tree; it was nothing to arouse the happy old beast in men. The total effect was depressing. That was my first impression-but before I got to my destination even that had worn off. Ugly bodies weren't any more noticeable than ugly taxicabs; the eye discounted them automatically. And so it appeared to be with everybody else, too; those on the streets seemed to have acquired utter indifference. Maybe Schedule Bare Back got them ready for it.

One thing I did not notice consciously until much later: after the first block I was unaware of my own nakedness. I noticed other people long after I had forgotten my own bare skin. Somehow, some way, the American community had been all wrong about the modesty taboo and had been wrong for centuries.

When tackled firmly, it was as empty as the ghost that turns out to be a flapping window drape. It did not mean a thing, either pro or con, moral or immoral. Skin was skin and what of it?

I was let in to see the Old Man at once. He looked up and growled, "You're late."

I answered, "Where's Mary?"

"In the infirmary, getting treated and dictating her report. Let's see your hands."

"I'll show them to the doctor, thanks," I replied, making no move to take off the gloves. "What's up?"

"If you would ever bother to listen to a newscast," he grumbled, "you would know what was up."

Chapter 24

I'm glad I had not looked at a newscast; our honeymoon would never have gotten to first base. While Mary and I had each been telling the other how wonderful the other one was the war had almost been lost -and I was not sure about that "almost". My suspicion that the slugs could, if necessary, hide themselves on any part of the body and still control hosts had proved to be right-but I had guessed that from my own experience on the streets. It had been proved by experiments at the National Zoo before Mary and I had holed up on the mountain, although I had not seen the report. I suppose the Old Man knew it; certainly the President knew it and the other top VIPs.

So Schedule Sun Tan replaced Schedule Bare Back and everybody skinned down to the buff.

Like hell they did! The matter was still "Top Secret" and the subject of cabinet debates at the time of the Scranton Riot. Don't ask me why it was top secret, or even restricted; our government has gotten the habit of classifying anything as secret which the all-wise statesmen and bureaucrats decide we are not big enough boys and girls to know, a Mother-Knows-Best-Dear policy. I've read that there used to be a time when a taxpayer could demand the facts on anything and get them. I don't know; it sounds Utopian.

The Scranton Riot should have convinced anybody that the slugs were loose in Zone Green despite Schedule Bare Back, but even that did not bring on Schedule Sun Tan. The fake air-raid alarm on the east coast took place, as I figure it, the third day of our honeymoon; there had not been any special excitement in the village when we visited it the day before that and certainly no vigilante activity. After the false air-raid alarm it took a while to figure out what had happened, even though it was obvious that lighting could not fail by accident in so many different shelters.

It gives me the leaping horrors to think about it even now-all those people crouching in the darkness, waiting for the all-clear, while zombies moved among them, slapping slugs on them. Apparently in some air raid bunkers the recruitment was one hundred percent. They did not have a chance.